Politics

PANGSAU, MYANMAR—Thinking quickly to thwart disaster as he ventured deep into the Myanmar rainforest to meet with State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, Secretary of State John Kerry threw a vine over a pit of quicksand to save the life of his 12-year-old Moroccan companion, Drumstick, sources confirmed Monday.

WASHINGTON—Admitting that it might be nice to just relax and take it easy over the next several weeks, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, was reportedly debating Friday whether to cancel her upcoming winter vacation plans to scale the world’s second-highest mountain, K2.

President-elect Donald Trump made a variety of lofty promises during his campaign as part of a pledge to “make America great again.” The Onion looks at several of these promises and evaluates whether Trump will be willing or able to follow through on them.

CEDAR PLAINS, PA—After years of delays and mounting criticism from voters and political pundits, President Barack Obama finally followed through on a campaign promise he made in 2008 to spend one night alone in the abandoned Cedar Plains Family Fun amusement park, sources confirmed Wednesday.

ST. PAUL, MN—Wondering how anyone could read the articles in such publications and not recognize them as “total establishment propaganda,” local man Mark Furlong, a longtime reader of Lib-Slaves.info, told reporters Monday he was sick and tired of the obvious mainstream biases on news sites like WideAwakePatriot.com.

Construction is currently stalled on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would connect North Dakota’s Bakken Shale development to oil tank farms in Illinois, by protests led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. The Onion provides answers to key questions about the project.

LOS ANGELES—Citing statistics that showed a sharp decline in the number of pageviews and unique users over the past week, media industry observers noted Thursday that traffic to Breitbart.com, the right-wing current affairs and opinion website, has continued to fall as more readers begin getting their news analysis from graffiti scrawled throughout their neighborhoods.

ASHINGTON—In an effort to honor the “sweet-ass” legacy of a hair metal band that he said “totally fucking shreds,” Vice President Joe Biden reportedly snuck into the Oval Office early Thursday to forge President Obama’s signature on an executive order that would officially recognize December as Dokken History Month.

WASHINGTON—Saying the new effort would help them make critical inroads with low-income rural voters following a stunning election loss last week, the Democratic National Committee announced the launch of a new Hamilton-inspired web series Tuesday starring Lena Dunham intended to connect with working-class Americans and address their most pressing concerns.

NERCHINSK, RUSSIA—Quickly unlocking one cell door after another as he shuffled down the dimly lit hallway in his tattered prison-issued jumpsuit, a gaunt, weathered Secretary of State John Kerry led an inmate uprising Tuesday in a remote Siberian labor camp, sources confirmed.

DENVER—Growing increasingly unsettled at the president-elect’s choice of advisors and the prospect of life under a Donald Trump administration, local resident Paul Austin told reporters Monday he was at the point where the thought of Reince Priebus controlling the White House was actually fairly comforting.

With two months until the inauguration of Donald Trump, many Americans are wondering what his term will look like and what his administration might accomplish. The Onion answers some common questions about Trump’s upcoming presidency

‘Nope, Looks Like It’s All Good Here,’ Says FBI Director

WASHINGTON—In a letter addressed to Congress that was quickly followed by a second message retracting the first, FBI director James Comey is said to have briefly reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails for several more minutes Friday.

NEW YORK—Declaring that they would work tirelessly to hold both figures to account, the nation’s media outlets pledged Thursday that they would not relent in providing evenhanded criticism of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton over the next four years.

ITHACA, NY—In the hours since the Republican nominee’s stunning election to the nation’s highest office Tuesday night, reports have confirmed that, regardless of circumstance, it is not even remotely close to okay to act like Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON—In response to widespread criticism that they had failed to predict Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, analysts from polling organizations around the nation admitted Thursday they had underestimated the influence of voters’ adrenal glands on the presidential race.

WASHINGTON—Telling reporters they felt completely depleted after spending the past 36 hours contemplating a Donald Trump presidency, Americans across the country admitted Thursday they were unsure whether they would have enough revulsion and horror left in them to agonize over his forthcoming cabinet and court appointments.

U.S. Population At 13,462

WASHINGTON, DC–With the April 1 deadline for returning Census 2000 forms finally passed, the Bureau of the Census announced Monday that the U.S. population stands at 13,462.

Population Per Square Mile (map)

"We at the Census Bureau are shocked by the incredible decrease in the population that apparently took place in the 10 years since the last Census in 1990," Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt said. "A 1999 projection estimated the U.S. population at 274 million and set the annual growth rate at .95 percent. Yet from this latest Census count, we find that this projection overestimates the population by a multiple of 20,000."

Despite the sharp population dip, some data remains consistent with previous censuses. New York remains the nation's largest city, with a population of 664. Los Angeles is a close second with 657, and Chicago a distant third with 329. Surprisingly, the nation's fourth largest city is now Elkhart, IN, with a population of 256. Some suspect that the rise is the result of a citywide "Hey, Elkhart, Come To Your Census!" campaign. The most precipitous decline in urban population was in Houston, TX, formerly America's fourth largest city. In 1990, Houston boasted a population of 1,630,553. In 2000, it is 12.

No one lives in St. Louis.

As a result of the low Census count, hundreds of members of the House of Representatives are now departing Washington. Because the Constitution stipulates that the number of representatives is determined by each state's population, these representatives are finding themselves without the necessary constituents to justify their presence in congress.

"I greatly enjoyed my 20 years in the House," said U.S. Rep. William Skene (R-ID). "Sadly, only one person from my state, Hank, answered the Census, so I will have to tender my resignation."

Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt.

Yet some changes could be beneficial. The nation's Social Security crisis has been solved, with the nation's 7,204 senior citizens dividing amongst themselves $416 billion in Social Security funds.

"Last week, I was turned away by the local V.A. hospital," said Warren Costello, 88, a Medford, MA, WWII veteran and diabetes sufferer who doesn't have medical insurance. "But now I can afford my very own jet-powered walker."

"Gone are the days of 40 children to a classroom," education advocate Marian Wright Edelman said. "Today, the ratio is an estimated 40,000 classrooms to a child."

But despite such optimism, some observers are predicting that the low population count will have catastrophic effects on the national and global economy.

Hank Logan, the population of Idaho.

"Our 13,462 residents will be extremely hard-pressed to match the estimated 1999 gross domestic product of $6.9 trillion, unless each of them works tens of thousands of industrial, agricultural, and service-sector jobs," said Professor M. Russell Harte of Northwestern University's Kellogg School Of Business. "Also, I predict that the importation of foreign goods will plummet by nearly 600,000 percent, and the previously burgeoning consumer economy will experience a violent collapse. And if you consider that most of the Census respondents were aged 65 years or older, it doesn't take long to come to the conclusion that we are doomed."

As experts in countless fields contemplate the potentially disastrous impact the Census results may have on American life, they all arrive at the same question: Why did the American population decline so sharply during the 1990s?

"Many theories have been offered, such as disease, or mass genocide by global thermonuclear war, or perhaps devastation from the killer-bee invasions that were predicted to occur sometime in the '90s," Prewitt said. "Many are even speculating that not everyone sent in their Census forms. But the cold, hard evidence is telling us that it will take us a long time to rebuild our population to 1990 levels. So commence breeding, America."